


Circles

by RacetrackBatsman



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 12:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20435870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RacetrackBatsman/pseuds/RacetrackBatsman
Summary: Isolation breeds awareness of thoughts often left ignored. Will there ever be realisation?





	Circles

There is no love on the ice. There is only a tolerance of certain people within your space. An opening for some form of touch that goes deeper that what is deemed sensible. It is kept quiet because those sorts of things are not allowed. Yet how many indulge in it during the quiet moments. Humans need companionship of some kind. Some days they need something deeper. Something that goes beyond the brotherly bonds that are expected in the confines of a ship.

Cornelius Hickey. The name so strange on your tongue. Blue eyes that somehow contain more humour and defiance than anyone aboard either ship. Cat like. Rat like. Depending on who you asked. You just saw him as a man. A clever man who deserves more than what he gets. Would have made a good marine if he did not seem to constantly be quarrelling with authority. Would have made a good leader if he did not spend half his life antagonising anyone who would see fit to promote him.

It is that intelligence and energy that allows you to let him into your space. Allows him to place his hands against your face. He is a tactile man. Constantly placing his hands on things that do not belong to him. You let him. You let him place his hands on you as if he owns you. He does not own you despite that. You belong to no one but your marines. Though there is a part of you that would give them to him if he were to ask. Such is his power over you.

Those blue eyes and that half smile. The way he cocks his head almost mockingly when he does not quite like what he hears. Defiant bastard.

When did it start? You are not entirely sure when ambivalence moved to curiosity. Perhaps at the lashing. Where he took a decidedly unjust punishment before looking defiantly at both Captain Crozier and Commander Fitzjames. You had hidden tobacco where he slept. An anonymous gift so that he knew that someone on this ship was on his side. Yet why were you on his side? You had agreed with what he did. The Captain was decidedly doing nothing about the woman who certainly had some control over the damned beast. Hickey had done what no one else would. You admired him for that.

That is all it was. Admiration. Nothing more. You tell yourself over and over that as you seek his company in the bowels of The Terror. The darkness hides all from God, from fellow men. You lean into his touch as if it means something when you know it does not mean a thing. At least it means nothing to him. His heart belongs elsewhere. You know about the ring, about the fight. This man could never feel anything more for you. He would never see you as anything more than convenient.

You were simply there. Sympathetic to his cause. An ally in the eventual mutiny that you would both create. You pretended that it did not bother you. That his touches were not truly anything more than a distraction from the ice; even as you leaned towards him when he pulled away.

It gnawed at you a little. Not enough to voice. This was something you had to keep hidden. It was not love you felt for the man; but it was something. There was something more to the way he touched you. The way that his hands felt against your skin. The way the warmth seemed to linger where his fingers brushed against your face. That is not love surely.

Love is what you felt for your marines. The burning need to make sure that those who remained would escape this ice unscathed. The desire to make sure that no one else would fall to the damned beast. That was love.

Love is not meeting someone outside of prying eyes. Love is not shame or fear that another would find you both. It was something else you felt for the man. It had to be. Love is not the way his touch never lingers for long. It is not the way that your conversations are only ever about mutinous intentions.

Yet you could feel his touch even when he was not there. You could hear his words in your mind clear as day; as if he were right beside you. He was so crystalline in your mind’s eye in a way that no one else had been before. Somehow he had wrapped himself around your mind like a serpent. Nestling in the dark recesses of your mind to be thought about only when alone.

He is shorter than you but you hardly notice. There is more power in the way he carries himself than would be achieved if he had simply been just ‘tall’. You feel smaller beside him. You want to be smaller beside him, to have him overpower you. Somehow you think he knows your need to follow orders. That is why he has taken a liking to you. It is why you like him. It is unspoken. You need to be controlled and he needs control. A fair trade. Or as close to one that you can get out here on the ice. You have the guns. He has the ideas. You make quite a pair together.

This is not love. This is necessity.

This is necessity; you think as you imagine what his lips would feel like against yours. How his hands would feel against your bare skin.

This is necessity; you think as the picture becomes clearer in your mind’s eye. His hands roaming your body. Touching. Feeling. Exploring. What would his hair feel like between your fingers? How would he sound?

Why do you feel something more than necessity for the man? Why do you want him? Why do you feel something akin to love?

You hope he knows. You hope that those blue eyes can see deep into your soul and read everything that is written there. Your desires laid bare on the frozen sea. Visible only to him and him alone. It is not something you could ever voice. And even if you could you never want to know his answer.

He loves Gibson. Loves. You see it in the gentleness that he has only with that man. And God do you hate it. Both him and Gibson. For what they have. What they had. Whatever that might have been. It is more than you could ever want. That gnaws at you more than anything else. Like claws under his skin, tearing at his heart, his head. Pulling him apart thread by thread.

You are not even sure if it is just the isolation anymore. The skinny caulkers mate is so deep under your skin it is hard to tell what is simply there because of necessity and what is there because you might actually feel something. It is not love. Yet somehow that seems not to ring true anymore.

It is not love. It cannot be love. Yet It is love. A sort of love.

You hate him. You love him. You need him. He is your only way off this ice and your only path to salvation. He is the rats under your skin pulling at anything they can reach. Desperate for something to hold onto. Desperate for something to eat.

Is it dangerous? Is he dangerous?

Perhaps, but you trust him anyway.

That is what love is after all; and you cannot ignore that anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the experimentation with perspective. I wanted to try something different.
> 
> The Terror has taken over my head and I keep writing things for it. The idea that Tozer is smart, but repeatedly rolls nat 1s on perception keeps going around in my head. I think he know's Hickey thinks little of him but he is so starved of something that he ignores his bodies own worry. You can love someone even when you know that you shouldn't because sometimes the human brain is stupid.
> 
> Anyway, listen to Circles by George Alice. It was going around my head when I wrote this.
> 
> Feedback is always greatly appreciated, particularly since I'm only just getting back into writing!


End file.
